An Endless Spit of Sand
by JosephineLL
Summary: Man … is a creature trapped between two voids, prenatal and posthumous, on a shrinking spit of sand he calls time. Tucker-Sato
1. Chapter One

Title: An Endless Spit of Sand  
Author: Josephine  
Email: PG-13  
Category: Action  
Codes: Tu/S, others  
Summary: Man … is a creature trapped between two voids, prenatal and posthumous, on a shrinking spit of sand he calls time.  
A/N: Occurs before the Xindi arc

* * *

"The next step is to place the modulating restrictor into the hoofalte."

Trip paused, then glanced under his outstretched arm to look at Hoshi, contorting himself into something not at all like a pretzel. His arm, which held the said (heavy) restrictor, quivered slightly under the strain. He was covered in sweat, and had stripped the top half of his jumpsuit off, tying the arms around his waist. The de rigueur black Henley had been tossed in a corner long ago, and Trip was seriously considering forgoing the drenched undershirt he was left in. At least it was sleeveless and kept his arms free.

Hoshi herself was primly seated nearby on a cargo container, the small blue type that often time comes in very handy, seemingly unfazed by either Engineering's stifling heat or the sight of Trip in a thin, semi-transparent cotton tank that give the impression of being painted on. The only concession she had made to the high temperature was a slight unzipping of her uniform and a delicate sheen of perspiration on her forehead. And the tendency to let her gaze roam over Trip when his back was turned, which she thought he didn't know about but was wrong. There isn't anything a man who is interested in a woman will feel more than her eyes on him.

"Yer kidding me, right? Hoofalte? What the hell is a hooflate?"

Raising her eyebrow at Trip's snappish tone earned Hoshi a twist of his mouth and a sincere, if muttered, 'Sorry'. She went back to the alien instruction manual, flipping through the pages for show.

"I don't know, the other terms were translatable, but I can't make 'hooflate' out." She looked back up at Trip and gave her own apology with a half shrug. "I'm sorry, Commander."

Turning back to the regulator he had picked up in an alien parts shop (which actually had more in common with a junkyard) that he hoped would be the one that would get the warp drive back up and running (finally), Trip grunted as he repositioned himself and stared at the restrictor in his hand, then over at what he hoped was the hooflate. "No diagrams?" he asked again.

"No diagrams," Hoshi answered again, her arms crossed over her knees, not bothering to search. Forty-two times through the manual and she could recite it in her sleep.

Trip wiggled himself further in the wall of Engineering, giving an interesting little shimmy that brought all sorts of licentious thoughts to Hoshi's mind.

Sighing, she looked down at the too familiar manual, occupying herself by translating the alien script into Denobulan, then from Denobulan to Andorran, which got her thinking about Shran, and really, what a lovely color he was, and how perfect it would look in her house, when she eventually got one —

Another grunt from Trip brought her back from a nice daydream of a blue kitchen where the pots and pans hung on the walls from wriggly antennae to hear him say "Ok, it's in. I think."

"Attach the modulator leads to the regulator," Hoshi recited from memory, "then restore power to the grid."

A few more grunts and wiggles and an interesting snapping sound, and Trip scootched his way backward out of the hole in the wall, sitting down with a thud and a relieved sigh. He reached up toward the closest intercom, toggling it open.

"Ready to turn this thing on, Cap'n." Trip grinned over at Hoshi, and she smiled back, trying hard not to laugh. A wide smudge crossed Trip's cheek, and his brown hair stood up in damp spikes.

'Very cute,' she thought, then as the Captain distracted Trip's attention, Hoshi let herself admire parts of the engineer that needed other, more serious adjectives than cute. Like cut, buff, hard, bitable…

"Will do. Tucker out."

Once more Hoshi came out of a heat-induced daydream, gathering her wayward thoughts and following Trip over to a nearby workstation.

"I've isolated it from most of the systems; this thing may have worked fine and dandy in simulations, but…"

Hoshi nodded absent mindedly, peeking over at the alien hardware not five feet away. "Do you think something will happen?" she asked as she casually took a few steps to the left, putting Trip between her and the regulator.

"I hope it'll work." With a flourish, Trip typed in the code to restore power.

"No, I mean- " A loud thrum cut Hoshi off as a rippling wave expanded from the alien mechanism, fading well before it reached the walls of Engineering. "What was that?"

"Hell if I know," Trip said under his breath. He stared intently at the screen, a frown creasing his brow.

Sidling over to her previous position, Hoshi risked another peek at the device. "Umm, Trip?"

"Just a minute, Hosh." A few key clacks punctuated his words.

"I really think you should take a look at this." Her voice trailing off nervously, Hoshi made room for Trip as he joined her.

"What on Earth?"

Nodules had begun to emerge on the regulator, swellings that didn't seem to grown unless you glanced away for a bit, then another look showed you they had.

More anxious by the second, Hoshi watched Trip quickly try and shut down power to that grid again, and the lights did go off in that section, but the regulator kept glowing.

"It's tapped into another power source." Sticking his head back in the wall, Trip looked at the device again. "How the devil did it do that?"

Trip stood up, hands on hips. "I don't want to just unplug it, but we can't leave it there," he mumbled, talking more to himself than Hoshi. "Although it doesn't look like it's doing much of anything right now."

"It's growing," Hoshi pointed out. Indeed, the bumps were half an inch long now, more like knobs than nodules.

"Yeah, but it's slow. I want to tell the Cap'n about this, and see exactly what's going on before I try anything." A call to the bridge got no answer though, and Trip gave up trying after the Armory and Sickbay were silent too.

"What the hell did this thing do?" Walking across Engineering, Trip picked up one of the newer, larger PADDs. He returned to the original workstation where Hoshi waited, and typed a few more instructions with one hand, peering intently at the PADD.

"That's funny," he said, not laughing.

Hoshi looked around his shoulder to see nothing but static filling the small screen. "What's wrong?"

"Dunno." Nothing Trip did would bring the sensor data up, not even rebooting the PADD, or the tried and true method of giving it a good sharp whack. "I'll take a look at it later."

Tossing the PADD down, Trip picked up one of the original PADDs that had been lying by the keyboard. "This'll be slower, but if anything changes the computer'll let me know."

Uneasily staring at the glowing alien device, Hoshi was caught by surprise as Trip strode off to the door, his long steps eating up the plating and causing her to hurry after him. She quickly caught up, however, as he repeatedly pushed the control button, trying to get the door open.

"Does nothing work anymore?" Griping under his breath, wrestling with an access panel under the control pad, Trip exposed the piston with its lever that would manually open the door. A heave and a ho, and the door opened with a soft whoosh.

Trip's concentration was locked on the PADD in his hand as the pair walked down the corridor toward the lift that would take them to the bridge. "Malcolm said he didn't trust that trader, but his was the only place that had anything that could get us moving again. Looks like Mal was right this time…"

Hoshi's sharply indrawn breath and the clutch of her fingers on his arm stopped him short, and he glanced down to see wide, scared eyes in her pale face.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

At the sight of Hoshi's scared brown eyes, Trip's head snapped up and he automatically pushed her behind him. He wasn't sure what to expect- aliens with big honkin' guns, some kind of funky purple ooze oozing down the walls and over the floor- but what he did see certainly wasn't it.

At first glance everything appeared normal; Crewman Rostov and Ensign Smithee were halfway down the corridor, walking toward Trip and Hoshi. Smithee had her arms full with what looked like a dozen or so PADDs, a number of which had slipped out of her hands and were falling to the floor. Rostov had lunged forward, trying to catch as many as he could, but most had just bounced off his outstretched fingers. What had caused the look of shock on Hoshi's face and the dawning sense of alarm to grow in Trip was the fact that Smithee, Rostov, and the PADDs seemed… frozen. Rostov was leaning forward in an impossible angle to hold, the PADDS were suspended in mid-air, and Smithee's face was set in a chagrined mask at her clumsiness. It was a red light/ green light game stuck on red.

Slowly Trip approached the pair, Hoshi hard on his heels. He waved his hand in front of Rostov's nose, getting no response, while Hoshi examined the PADDs.

"What's wrong with them?" Kneeling on the floor, Hoshi looked up Trip.

"I have no idea, darlin'," he answered abstractly, his focus still on Rostov. "Suspended animation? Some kind of stasis field? Whatever it is, we better get to the bridge." He reached out and helped Hoshi to her feet, then took off down the corridor at a jog.

"The lift's the other way!" Hoshi cried out after Trip, but as he turned a corner she cursed in Russian at him and ran to catch up.

"Don't think the lift is going to work," replied Trip as she reached him; tugging on a hatch he opened it, revealing an access tube with rungs set into the far side.

Stifling a groan at how many decks they had to climb to get to the bridge, Hoshi followed Trip up the ladder. To keep her mind off the strange sight of a wax works Smithee and Rostov, Hoshi began counting rungs, but gave up after two hundred forty-two. Each approaching hatch got her hopes up, then dashed as it passed without them stopping. She was exhausted and understandably relieved when Trip finally did stop and open a hatch, pulling her into the corridor after him with a slight grunt.

Hoshi's heart was already pumping hard and her breathing was labored, so the adrenaline rush she got at the sight of three other crewmen petrified in mid-stride didn't do much for the old 'fight or flight' instinct, it only made her stomach turn sour. Creeping past them, Hoshi decided to pencil in a mental breakdown once this was all over.

One more scramble up an access tube, shorter this time, brought Hoshi and Trip to the bridge, popping out behind the console in the situation room.

On some unconscious level, Hoshi had believed that when they got to the bridge, the Captain and everyone there would still be moving around, everything would be fine and she could get back to supporting the people whose jobs it was to make it all better. The sight of Archer paused as he came around the Tactical station dashed those desperate but far-fetched hopes, and Hoshi let a tiny whimper of despair leak out of her before taking a deep breath and stiffening her spine.

A gentle squeeze on her shoulder made her glance up; Trip's smile and the reassuring look in his blue eyes buoyed her spirits. Without realizing it, Hoshi leaned into him, seeking more comfort, but Trip had already moved past her down to the Science station.

"Can you figure out what's wrong?" Her back to Travis, Hoshi rested against T'Pol's console, trying hard to ignore the Vulcan sitting motionless in front of her.

"I sure as hell hope so," Trip answered, a frown creasing his forehead, his shoulders tightening with every command he typed in that wasn't getting a response. "Dammit." Slapping his hand on the console, Trip spun around to look at the displays on the wall, hands on hips, eyes scanning the readings, searching for anything that could tell him what was happening to his crewmates.

Hoshi, not knowing what to do that would help, watched him for a moment before going to her own station. Working around the ensign that was already there, she flipped through the channels, getting nothing, not even static. The few hails she tried got no response either.

"Oh, Christ…"

The sound of Trip's voice made Hoshi turn to see him leaning with a hand on a support bar, head down, the tension that had tightened his lean frame a short while ago now gone. "What? What is it?" Abandoning her attempts to reach anyone, Hoshi rushed over to Trip, trying to figure out what he had seen. "What?"

He pushed off from the wall, pointing down at one of the many display screens. Hoshi tried to see where he was pointing, but didn't understand what she was supposed to be looking at. "I don't see…"

"This." Now Trip's finger rested next to a readout- 02:22:57:73. As they watched, the last number turned to 74. Surprised, Hoshi glanced up at Trip. He nodded.

"It changed," she said, puzzled, turning back to the numbers. "Why did it move when nothing else is? Wait… two twenty-two. Isn't that what time it is?"

Trip nodded again. "Two twenty-two and fifty seven point seven four seconds. For about another half-minute. That last number should be rolling by so fast you can't see it." Hoshi and Trip looked at each other, Hoshi slowly beginning to realize what he meant.

"The Cap'n and them all aren't frozen, darlin', they're trapped in time."


End file.
